The core idea is that costs are shared by co-operation between parties who have a similar need. This is not a new concept, and has appeared and suceeded in many different forms in business. Like a 'franchise' which shares branding costs because it would be impossible to get the same level of branding on their own individual budgets. There are other reasons to opensource your code (fame, altruism, etc) but these are not very appropriate in your context.
On many phones (like mine) this app is pre-installed and actually uninstallable it was the main reason i switched to cyanogenmod
recently i finally decided to give the radeon and try. and bought a cheap radeon HD 6450. Ok. I admit i still had to write my own modeline to get rid of overscan issue (similar to my experience with nvidea), but after that it JUST WORKED, with seemingly any kernel i build without having to shoe-horn in proprietary drivers everytime i do a build.
The 3D performance seems perfectly adequate for my needs, and being opengl 4.1 I can build and run opengl ES 2.0 type code against it happily. I really dont know why every slags off ATI/radion support, and gives nvidea a free ride. I like life of the ATI side of the fence and I'm not going back to nvidia anytime soon.
For some of us having a card with a half decent opensource driver in the kernel tree is not an idealogical battle, but simply a practical necessity.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion